Time to Value (TTV) is the elapsed time from customer signup or contract signing to realizing meaningful value from the product. It is defined company-specifically as the first moment the customer experiences the core benefit they paid for (sometimes called "first value moment" or "aha moment"). Shorter TTV strongly correlates with higher retention, lower churn in early months, faster expansion, and stronger word-of-mouth. It's the operational metric for the onboarding experience.
How TTV is defined varies by product:
Self-serve SaaS: TTV is often "first time the user completed a meaningful action" (e.g., for Slack, sending the first message in a connected team channel; for Figma, sharing the first design with a collabor...